


Measure the Cost

by greywash



Series: Fun in the Sun Creative Calisthenics [4]
Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Author hasn't seen Infinity War so let's call it an AU, Coming of Age, F/F, Gen, Oxford, See beginning notes for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 09:45:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15021944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: "I'mfine," Shuri had told her brother, "I'mfine, I'mfine, stopfussingat me," when he'd called before she'd even had a chance to unpack. "I have to go now! I'm going to go punting! I'm going to eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper! I'm going go to have a perfectly normal conversation with some perfectly normal teenage girls!"





	Measure the Cost

**Author's Note:**

> Today's prompt from [**@prettyboysdontlookatexplosions**](http://prettyboysdontlookatexplosions.tumblr.com): "for creative calisthenics: newsprint, mcu."
> 
> This one took **1:17:59**. I'm throwing on a **disturbing content** warning on this one; my full warning policy is [in my profile](http://www.ao3.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings), and you are always welcome to [email me](mailto:greywash@gmail.com) with more specific warning-related questions.

For all of Michaelmas term, Shuri is agonizingly, excruciatingly lonely. She'd expected this, and yet she hadn't. The only other woman in more than one of her lectures is called Mukta Bakshi and comes from London, and she narrows her eyes at a joke Shuri makes about Gallai's Conjecture on the second day—and honestly, Shuri'd just wanted Liam Foxley to shut up about graph theory, anyway—and doesn't let it go.

"I'm _fine_ ," Shuri had told her brother, "I'm _fine_ , I'm _fine_ , stop _fussing_ at me," when he'd called before she'd even had a chance to unpack. "I have to go now! I'm going to go punting! I'm going to eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper! I'm going go to have a perfectly normal conversation with some perfectly normal teenage girls—"

"Ah, Shuri," T'Challa had sighed, but he'd let her go; and Shuri had wandered out into the last of the weak October sunlight, and someone had shouted at her for stepping on the grass.

But the boys at Oxford all either treat her like a strange, exotic bird who's accidentally fluttered in through their window, or fall all over themselves to reassure her how pleased they are to see a _woman_! a _Black person_! a _Black woman_! in maths! at Oxford! until Shuri takes to doing her work in the back of a townie pub, dirty and dimly lit, with sticky floors, where at least no one talks to her like _that_. No one talks to her all that much at all.

"Not headed home for the hols?" asks the barmaid, when Shuri goes up for another pint. She doesn't much care for lager, but it's cheap and a pint lasts a long time, and Shuri's been careful, she thinks, of keeping her budget within normal student bounds. She didn't trick five separate Dora off her tail and onto, respectively, a plane, a plane, a cruise ship, the Eurostar, and a plane just to call attention to herself spending too much at the pub.

"Not this time," Shuri says. "Are you a student?"

"Nah," says the barmaid. "My mum's a lab tech at Chronos Therapeutics—I grew up here. Vi, by the way," she says, wiping her hands on the towel at her waist so she can stick one broad hand across the bar. 

"Shuri," says Shuri, and shakes it.

Sneaky, Shuri calls it—but that comes later. Vi's half-white, as tall as Shuri but easily twice as broad, solid arms and thick ribs, rounded shoulders; soft folds of flesh at her breasts and a soft belly spattered with freckles, which Shuri discovers six and a half days later in her narrow student single, heart pounding so hard her hands shake on Vi's sides. Vi isn't a student, and she did grow up in Oxford, but she also has a degree in economics from King's and is taking a year to save up before she goes back for her doctorate.

"So she's older than you," says T'Challa, sounding unsure, but Shuri waves her hands at him. 

"She's twenty-three!" Shuri protests. "I'm nineteen and doing a doctorate in mathematics! _Everyone I know_ is older than me! Besides, how old is Nakia again?" and T'Challa makes a face like an offended rabbit, which is what Shuri _thought_.

"There's a word for that, you know," Shuri tells him. "They call it a _cougar_ "; but T'Challa has already ended the call.

So Hilary term is—better. Vi has boatloads of friends— _literal_ boatloads, so Shuri does finally go punting on the Thames, on a freezing grey day that turns rainy and ends with the lot of them drenched and shivering, at Vi's friend Jacob's boyfriend Eddie's artists houseshare a half-mile away, Shuri wringing her scarf out in the sink. Priya loans her a dry jumper and Vi tucks Shuri's hands under her shirt to warm them up. Then Shuri has to go home to put in a few hours on her papers and everyone shouts at her not to go: not, Shuri thinks, regretful and pleased, quite the reception she's used to. Because Foxley and his maths bros aren't getting any better, and Mukta Bakshi still acts like Shuri's invisible whenever they wind up, however briefly, in the same room; if Shuri'd only known that Gallai's Conjecture was not a laughing matter—well, no, to be honest, she still would've made the joke, but at least she'd've gone in eyes open. Halfway through Trinity, Dr. Banker-Smythe tells her that her work is much better than he'd really expected, when he'd first accepted her application; and Shuri says, "Why did you accept me, then?" which leaves him cross and flustered as he shows her to the door, flushing all the way into the collar of his pressed blue shirt.

 _Does it get any better?_ she wants to ask Vi; but doesn't. She doesn't think Vi took a year off because she desperately wanted to tend bar; she thinks Vi took a year off because she wasn't passing yet, and she didn't want to spend all day answering questions. So now Vi passes, more often than not: as a fat biracial lesbian, about to return to a field dominated by white men. And for Shuri's part—she scrubs her toe along the ground. She kept tricking the Dora Milaje, didn't she. Renting space to work at her dirty pub table with her foul cheap pints. Passing; and not passing: up and down, like the punts. Down and up. Shuri doesn't know how to measure it, for Vi. She measures different things for herself. Vi called her _Princess_ , exactly once; and here in May Shuri sits in the sun—for once, at last—by the river, her bag dangling from its strap over her knees, and she watches the boats on the water, silvering up, silvering down. She went in for maths because at least maths isn't all that different, between home and here; she wasn't about to sit through years smiling and nodding through materials science she knew was wrong just for a piece of paper that Liam Foxley and Dr. Banker-Smythe knew how to read. But she had seen the shape of how it would be, nearly, back home, even when she knew, she _knew_ she couldn't yet fill in its skin: what did she know of Oxford? Beloved of Wakanda, her brother, her family; and wanting—something else. Because she'd _wanted_ this, hadn't she; she'd wanted the punts on the water and fish and chips even if they don't come wrapped in newspaper and the foul pints and her narrow single bed and, yes, she'd wanted the piece of paper, hadn't she, even knowing how how reluctantly they'd read it, and how little it'd change. She wanted all of it, didn't she, even knowing she couldn't yet feel what it would cost. Does feeling that now change wanting it, really?

For _her_?

No one else? 

_Off work_ , Vi texts, and then, _Hungry?_ ; and Shuri pushes her heels together, apart. Together again.

 _Yeah_ , she replies, and shoulders her bag. _Let's go._

**Author's Note:**

> I know that I usually use actor ages for characters, and that Lupita Nyong'o is younger than Chadwick Boseman, but since Shuri already departs from that principle I saw absolutely no reason to not take it further, and I could not, _could not_ resist the opportunity for that cougar joke.


End file.
